Whatever must they take him for? Surely for a man who was trying to hide; for a thief, a bankrupt, a murderer! He felt wretched. It was the change-over that was painful. Afterward, in less than an hour, he would be free.
“Now here’s a jacket that might have been made for you. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I’ve got the trousers to go with it. No. But wait a minute … this gray pair …”
Monsieur Monde submitted, for he dared not argue. It was all rather better quality than he’d have liked. Dressed like this, he looked like a respectable clerk, a careful accountant.
“Would you like shoes and shirts too?”
He bought some. A small fiber suitcase of an ugly brown, also secondhand, was finally provided.
“Are you going to keep it on?”
“If you don’t mind I should even like to leave you my other clothes.…”
He saw the Armenian glance at the tailor’s label, and reflected that he had made a mistake. He was not afraid of being followed. The thought had not occurred to him. And yet it vexed him to leave this sort of trace behind.
When he emerged, his parcel was still in the first room. The shopkeeper handed it to him. Couldn’t he guess from the feel of it that it contained bank notes?
It was ten o’clock. The time when … No, no. He didn’t want to think about what he usually did at such or such a time. The jacket was rather tight over the shoulders. The overcoat was made of thinner cloth than his own, and this gave him a feeling of lightness.
Why did he go unhesitatingly to wait for a bus, at the corner of Boulevard Saint-Michel, that would take him to the Gare de Lyon? He had not thought about it beforehand; he had not said to himself that he would do this or that.
Once again, he was following a preordained plan, for which he was not responsible. Nor had he made any decision the day before. It all came from much further back, from the beginning of things.
Standing on the platform of the bus, he patted his pockets; he leaned forward to see his reflection in the window. He felt no surprise. But he was still waiting, as he had waited after his First Communion, for something he longed for, which was slow in coming.
It felt odd to be following the crowd through the main hall of the station, carrying only a small suitcase like so many other travelers, then to take his place in the line at the ticket office and, when his turn came, to say meekly: “Marseilles.”
He was not asked which class. He was handed a mauve third-class ticket, which he examined with curiosity.
He kept on following the crowd. One merely had to drift along with it. He was pushed and jostled, suitcases were flung against his legs and a baby carriage shoved into his back, the loud-speaker shouted orders, train whistles blew, and he climbed like the rest into a third-class compartment where three soldiers already sat eating.
What embarrassed him chiefly was his parcel, which he had not thought of putting away in his suitcase. It is true that the suitcase was already full, but he opened it and packed the contents closer so as to set his mind at rest.
Was life beginning at last? He did not know. He was afraid to question himself. The smell in the compartment upset him, like the plaster and the stained forefinger of the barber’s assistant, and when the train started he went out into the corridor.
A magnificent sight, magnificent and sordid, met his eyes: the soaring blocks of blackened houses between which the train was threading its way, with hundreds and thousands of windows open or closed, linen hanging out, aerials, a prodigious accumulation, in breadth and in height, of teeming lives, from which the train suddenly broke away after a glimpse of the last green-and-white bus in a street that already seemed like a highway.
After that, Monsieur Monde stopped thinking. The rhythm of the train took possession of him. It was like some music with a regular beat, the words for which were provided by scraps of phrases, memories, the passing images that met his eyes, a lonely cottage in the countryside where a stout woman was washing clothes, a stationmaster waving his red flag in a toy station, people passing ceaselessly by him on their way to the toilet, a child crying in the next compartment and one of the soldiers asleep in his corner, his mouth wide open in a ray of sunlight.
He did not know where he was going or what he would do. He had set off. Nothing lay behind him any more: nothing lay before him as yet. He was in space.
He felt hungry. Everyone was eating. At a station he bought some dry sandwiches and a bottle of beer.
At Lyons it was dark already. He nearly got off the train, without knowing why, tempted to plunge right away into the spangled darkness, but the train moved off again before he had time to make up his mind.
There were so many things within him that he must settle later, when he’d got used to it, when the train stopped, when he reached some destination at last.
He was not afraid. He had no regrets. In most of the compartments the lights had been put out. People had fallen asleep leaning against one another, mingling their smells and their breath.
He dared not, as yet. And despite his weariness he went on standing in the drafty corridor. He kept his eyes averted from the next coach, where red carpets could be glimpsed.
Avignon … He stared in amazement at the big clock, which said only nine o’clock.… From time to time he cast a glance into his compartment, where he had left his suitcase in the rack beside various odd bundles.
Marseilles …
He went on foot, very slowly, toward the harbor. The big brasseries of La Canebière were still open. He stared at them with a sort of amazement, particularly at the men whom he could see through the lighted windows, sitting around their tables, as though he found it strange that life still went on.
These people were at their usual tables, as on any other evening. They had been in no train. They had just finished playing cards or billiards, or talking politics, and they were calling the waiter, or else the waiter, who knew them all by name, was telling them that it was closing time.
Some of them were coming out already, lingering on the edge of the sidewalk to finish the conversation they had begun, shaking hands, going off in various directions, each of them toward his home, his wife, his bed.
Iron shutters clattered down over windows. In the Old Port district, too, the little bars were being closed.
He saw the water quite close to him, small boats packed close together and lifted by the gently breathing sea. Reflected lights stretched out, and somebody was rowing, yes, even at this hour somebody was rowing in the cool darkness of the dock, somebody who was not alone, for there was a sound of whispering voices. Lovers, perhaps, or else smugglers?
He turned up the collar of his overcoat, the overcoat that was still unfamiliar to him, the feel of which he could not recognize. He raised his head to look at the starry sky. A woman brushed up against him, saying something, and he moved quickly away, took a small street to the right, and caught sight of the lighted doorway of a hotel.
It was warm inside, even in the entrance hall. There was a mahogany reception desk and a formal-looking gentleman in black, who asked him:
“Are you alone?”
He was offered a pad of registration forms, and after a moment’s hesitation he wrote down some name or other, the first that came into his mind.
“We still have one room vacant overlooking the Old Port.”
The clerk picked up the little suitcase and Monsieur Monde felt ashamed. Surely the man must be surprised at the meagerness of his luggage?
“It’s on the second floor. The elevator doesn’t work at this time of night.… If you’ll come this way …”
It was a comfortable room, with a small washroom beyond a glass partition. Over the mantelpiece there was a large mirror, and Monsieur Monde looked at himself in it, a long, serious look, shook his head, started to heave a sigh but suppressed it, and took off his somewhat tight-sleeved jacket, his tie, his shirt.
Then he inspected his lonely room and felt a slight regret, which he hardly dared admit to himsel
f, for not having listened to the woman who had spoken to him a short while before, by the water’s edge.
Finally he got into bed and pulled the blanket right up to his nose.
3
Tears were gushing from behind his closed eyelids, swelling them as they streamed forth. They were no ordinary tears. They gushed in a warm, endless flow from some deep spring, they gathered behind the barrier of his lashes and then poured freely down his cheeks, not in separate drops but in zigzagging rivulets like those that run down windowpanes on rainy days; and the patch of wetness beside his chin spread ever wider on his pillow.
Monsieur Monde could not have been asleep, could not have been dreaming, since he was conscious of a pillow and not of sand. And yet, in his thoughts, he was not lying in the bedroom of some hotel of which he did not even know the name. He was lucid, not with an everyday lucidity, the sort one finds acceptable, but on the contrary the sort of which one subsequently feels ashamed, perhaps because it confers on supposedly commonplace things the grandeur ascribed to them by poetry and religion.
What was streaming from his whole being, through his two eyes, was all the fatigue accumulated during forty-eight years, and if they were gentle tears, it was because now the ordeal was over.
He had given up. He had stopped struggling. He had hurried from far away—the train journey no longer existed, there was only a sense of endless flight—he had hurried here, toward the sea, which, vast and blue, more intensely alive than any human being, the soul of the earth, the soul of the world, was breathing peacefully close to him. For, in spite of the pillow, which was real enough but unimportant, he had ended his journey lying by the sea, he had collapsed beside it, exhausted and already pacified, he had lain down full length on warm golden sand, and there was nothing else in the universe but sea and sand, and himself speaking.
He was speaking without moving his lips, for which he had no need. He was telling of his infinite aching weariness, which was due not to his journey in a train but to his long journey as a man.
He was ageless now. He could let his lips quiver like a child’s.
“Always, for as long as I can remember, I’ve had to make such efforts.…”
No need to go into details here, as when he complained of anything to his wife.
Hadn’t the servants whispered among themselves, when he was a tiny boy, that he would never be able to walk because he was too fat? He had been bowlegged for quite a long time.
At school he used to stare intently, painfully, at the letters on the blackboard, and the teacher used to say: “You’re daydreaming again!”
It may well have been true, for he usually ended by falling asleep, willy-nilly.
“It’s pointless trying to make him study.…”
He remembered standing still in a corner of the playground at Stanislas, while all the others were running about, or sitting at his desk ignored by contemptuous teachers.
And yet, by dint of patience and fierce effort, he had passed his bachot.
Lord, how tired he was now! And why were the heaviest burdens laid on his shoulders, when he had done no harm to anyone?
His father, for instance, had never had to make the slightest effort. He played with life, with money, with women, he lived for his pleasure alone, and he was invariably lighthearted when he rose in the morning; his son had always seen him go by whistling to himself, his eye sparkling with the pleasure he had just enjoyed or that which he anticipated.
In this way he had squandered his wife’s dowry, and his wife had borne him no grudge. He had almost ruined the business inherited from his father and grandfather, and it was his son who’d had to labor year after year to set it on its feet again.
In spite of it all, when this man had at last succumbed to illness, his family had rallied around him, and he’d enjoyed the devotion of a wife who had never uttered one word of reproach and had spent her life waiting for him.
The whole thing was so overwhelming, incommensurate with words, on the scale of the sea, the sand, and the sun. Monsieur Monde felt like a great caryatid released, at long last, from its burden. He did not complain. He did not recriminate. He bore no resentment against anyone. Only, for the first time, now that it was over, he let his weariness flow out, like streams of rainwater blurring the windowpane, and he felt his body grow warmer and more peaceful.
“Why have you treated me so harshly?” he longed to whisper in the sea’s ear.
He had tried so hard to do the right thing! He had married so as to have a home and children, he had wanted to be a fruitful, not a sterile, tree; and one morning his wife had left him; he had found himself with a baby in one cot, a small girl in the other, without understanding, without knowing; he had been in despair, and those whom he questioned had smiled at his innocence; and finally, in forgotten drawers, he had discovered horrible drawings, obscene photographs, unspeakable things that had revealed to him the true nature of the woman he had thought so guileless.
In his heart of hearts he had borne her no resentment, he had pitied her for the demon she had inside her. And for the children’s sake he had married again.
He stretched out his whole frame in deep relief, and the little shining waves came up to lick the sand by his side; perhaps one of them would soon reach him for a caress.
He had borne his burden as long as his strength had lasted. How horrible it all was! His wife, his daughter, his son … And then money! … His money or their money, he no longer knew, he no longer wanted to know.… What was the good, since it was over and done with, and now at last …
Somebody was walking about. Loud footsteps that seemed to go right through him, a floor reverberating cruelly, a door opening and shutting, an agonizing silence; he was aware of two people face to face, two people looking one another up and down, who were both on the very verge of tragedy.
“No!”
He passed his hand over his face, and his face was dry; he passed it over the pillow, without encountering the damp patch under his chin. His eyelids were smarting, but it was from fatigue, and perhaps, too, from the soot of the train; and the train was responsible, too, for the ache in his limbs.
Who had said “No”? He sat up, his eyes wide open, and saw a slender ray of light under a door, the door next to his in a Marseilles hotel whose name he had forgotten.
The man who had said “No” was striding back and forth on the other side of the wall. The catch of a suitcase clicked open.
“Jean!”
“I said no!”
“Please, Jean! Listen to me! Let me explain, at least.…”
“No!”
The words came from outside, from out of the night. The man’s movements were quick and unhesitating. Probably he was taking his scattered belongings out of the wardrobe and cramming them into the suitcase.… Probably the woman was clinging to him, for there was a soft thud followed by a moan. He must have pushed her away, and she had collapsed somewhere or other.
“Jean, listen to me.…”
She must have been frantic. For her, too, the petty considerations of everyday life and conventional behavior no longer existed.
“I’ll explain.… I swear to you.…”
“Slut!”
“Yes, I’m a slut.… You’re right.… But …”
“D’you want to wake up the whole hotel?”
“I don’t care.… If there were a hundred people here it wouldn’t stop me from going on my knees to you and begging you to forgive me, imploring you.…”
“Shut up.…”
“Jean!”
“Shut up, d’you hear?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose, I promise you.…”
“Oh no! It was all my fault.…”
“I needed a breath of air.…”
“You needed a man, that’s all.…”
“It’s not true, Jean.… For three days I hadn’t stirred from this room, I’d been looking after you like.…”
“Like a mother, I suppose you’re going to say, yo
u trollop.”
“You were asleep, and I went out for a moment.…”
“To hell with you!”
“You won’t go away, will you? … You’re not going to leave me alone? … I’d rather you killed me.…”
“That’s what I feel like doing.…”
“Well then, kill me.…”
“You’re not worth it.… Let me go.… D’you hear?”
He must have pushed her away once again, she must have fallen onto the floor, there was a silence, then the voice, whose pathetic tone had already become monotonous, the plea that was almost a parody:
“Jeaaan!”
“Stop bleating my name.…”
“I can’t go on living without you.…”
“Go to hell!”
“How can you talk like that! … How can you have forgotten already.…”
“Forgotten what? What you did for me or what I did for you? … Tell me that.… Or rather, hold your tongue.… Where are my shirts? Where the devil have you put my shirts?”
And just as, between the acts of a tragedy, the players resume their normal voices, she simply muttered: “I sent three to the laundry. The others are on the top shelf in the bathroom cupboard.…”Then, reverting to her former tone: “Jean …”
He did not try to vary his response: “To hell with you!”
“What are you going to do?”
“That’s my own business.”
“I swear, since I’ve known you I haven’t let a man touch me.…”
“Except the one you were coming out of the dance hall with when I turned up …”
“I’d asked him to take me back here.… I was frightened.…”
He burst out laughing. “That’s the best yet!”
“Don’t laugh, Jean.… If you go away, you’ll be sorry for it tomorrow.…”
“Is that a threat?”
He sounded threatening himself. More than threatening, for there was a loud thud—perhaps he had struck her—then another silence, and a moan:
“You haven’t understood.… I’m the one who … Oh no, after all … I’d rather make an end to it right now.…”
Monsieur Monde Vanishes Page 4
